


even heroes have the right to bleed (I'm only a man looking for a dream)

by laughinginthebreeze



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Character Death, F/M, Ghost love, Ghosts, Insanity, Mentioned Characters, Past Relationship(s), Relationship(s), Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4580628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughinginthebreeze/pseuds/laughinginthebreeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I'm just a man who dared to dream.'<br/>"I'm insane." He refrains from saying. The words hover above his mouth, an impending reality sentence waiting to happen...</p>
            </blockquote>





	even heroes have the right to bleed (I'm only a man looking for a dream)

_**Even heroes have the right to bleed (I'm only a man looking for a dream)** _

 

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The symbolism of death haunts him.

Has _always_ haunted Stefan Salvatore. For as long as he can remember. In the early bloodied days, the only background, morphed out of the terror of others and filling his vacant, emotionless existence, a black skeletal being killing his undead heart.

Gloomy, sticky, guilt-ridden. Painted with the blood of others and his soul smeared with his victims screams.

Haphazardly trying, trying, _trying,_ but to no avail.

He tries too hard to feel people's pain. It kills him every day.

He has killed more than he ever dares to count. Tempted by the blood and then tormented by the grief and guilt afterwards.

Sometimes it is for selfless reasons. Or selfish. Whatever. They get confused in his mind somehow.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

And honestly, that black, skeletal figure of death is now somehow more promising than it has ever been threatening.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

There is a dead girl in his room.

She taunts him with the ever haunting vision of _what if_ and runs her fingers down the spine of his journal with a body that can no longer touch.

She smells of rain, and dust, and night times long swallowed by darkness, and sometimes he'll dream of a time when he was human, and the day he died because she didn't want to.

"I killed you." He flings the words at her because she seems to have forgotten. Maybe she wants the reminder to slice through his skin like vervain grenades because she knows that it _can_. Maybe _she_ is his punishment for an eternity of misery he has unleashed upon the world.

She laughs, unflinching, a cold ugly laugh, that spills from it the horror-struck monster she had once been, as though the reminder of it is supposed to leave a lingering imprint on his already tattered soul.

"Oh, trust me, Stefan. You've killed me more times than you think."

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

Sometimes he finds her, sitting at his desk, scrawling on pages in his journal in her neat ornate print. They are not the names of his victims alone this time, but they are the people who have suffered by their hands, all because he wore another's face, which others have worn before him and would have kept on wearing after him had he not become the monster he swore not to be and his last doppelgänger were still standing, and all because they have literal fate lines on their palms.

_Bonnie Bennett, Caroline Forbes, Nadia Petrova, Tom Avery, Matt Donovan..._

The list grows longer but the minutes won't stop. Every name is more potent than the last in its ability to wrack guilt through his body.

Of course _she_ is no longer entwined with the fate of a man with a stolen face, _she_ no longer lives with the guilt, if ever she had any. _She_ no longer has literal fate lines on her palms.

All because he killed her.

"Are you going to add your name as well?" He asks, because he can. He knows her like the back of his hand.

"You didn't kill me just in the sense of stabbing a dagger into my abdomen," she says, not entirely without cruelty. "You had killed my soul long before that."

"You killed my soul first." He argues, not entirely sure whether it's an admission or a petty lie to spite her.

"I came to see my daughter in her final moments. I sacrificed myself for her knowing I was going to die, it had nothing to do with you, Stefan."

His chest burns all of a sudden, and for some reason he feels resentment towards Nadia.

"Whatever." He punctuates his word with a roll of his eyes, so she can't tell he doesn't have anything else to say, which, he supposes, is only as fitting as she makes it.

Trouble is, Katherine Pierce always had a very cutting tongue.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

Sometimes he thinks she's only there to see how much of a mess his life has become without her.

"Why do you keep harassing me? Why not annoy Damon?" He mumbles, eyes closed, spread-eagled on his bed. He opens them as she steps toward him, a beauty in it's own imagining.

"I love you." She smiles. She is never quite as beautiful as she is when she declares her love for him. "But you already know that. So why ask?"

"I've just been thinking a lot about this." He smiles sadly.

She idly runs her hand down his bed cover. Her face is turned away from him, as though she is afraid to look him in the eyes. "Why?"

Stefan pretends not to hear the emotion in her voice.

"I loved you once." He admits. "Sometimes I think I still do." Goodness knows how she'll take it.

She turns around, beautiful in the storm, masked in fury. She is the ice melting on his heart, and all it took was those five words.

"Then _what_ did I die for?"

He laughs, unflinching, a cold ugly laugh, that spills from it the horror-struck monster he had once been.

_I will love you forever._

The memories twist, clash and slide together, morphed into something new that doesn't at all help him because he can no longer remember the answers.

"I don't know." He finally says, drawing it out into the silent room.

It's the most truthful thing he's ever said to her.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

"You know you shouldn't be doing this, right?" She'll smirk, looking at him, all teeth and nightmares, and _oh_ Stefan falls apart just looking at her. She loves reminding him of his limitations, almost as if she's punishing him.

He recovers, tilts his head at her as though he doesn't understand and she reiterates his guilty conscience.

"Falling for a dead girl when you have another who's perfectly capable of loving you."

"I don't-" he starts, but can't seem to find the words, or the courage to even say them with false conviction. _I love you._

"I love her." He says, now angry at her, because she always makes him feel like this, wrong and childish.

"I _love_ Caroline." He wishes he could make himself feel more certain.

She smiles sadly, like he's telling her something infinitely unforgettable, like she's already seen this story, and she all of a sudden looks very five hundred and thirty eight years old. "I know."

He doesn't relish in the pain on her face this time. He guesses he just wants to prove to her that he is something.

He only wishes that he didn't feel the need to do it so often.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

It takes her a week to come back, tattered and bloodied beyond recognition. It's taking her longer every time to come back to him.

"How many times will you keep coming back, just to haunt me?" He asks, exhausted. He glories for the days long past; where her song lived vibrantly cruel and he denied his love for her constantly, because if there is anything Katherine Pierce can do, it is make a thousand men fall weeping at her feet.

_Even heroes have the right to bleed._

She wears him out with her constant presence, ghostly apparitions and her daily reminders that he is the reason she is here to begin with.

There are days where merely her breath ages him. There are days where he is one hundred and sixty six years old and feels far too young.

"Eternity." Is her reply.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

He doesn't see her for nearly a month this time.

Well, he didn't see her, but he certainly remembers the times he could _feel_ her at the back of his mind, watching him, always when he didn't need her, and the times she wasn't there when he did.

Too much happens in her absence. There are too many things that go wrong in his life when she's not there.

"So," she says conversationally, spinning round full circle on his bedpost. "You have a mother."

Her voice, he notes, whilst empty of true malice, still makes him feel as though he's losing a war he never quite grasped the meaning of in the first place.

"Well done, very observant." He says, spitting out the words.

"Do you think she'll ever learn to love you?" Is her next question. Again, her voice is empty, carried away by the winds of Oblivion, voice stolen, vacated.

He's almost afraid to answer her. Somehow he's never enough for the people he's learned to love in his life.

"Well," Stefan smiles. "If _you_ of all people are doubting her love for me, then what possible chance could my poor estranged mother have?"

She smiles, all innocence and flighty, and very, very eighteen sixty four all in one, and for a second, he resents her, for taking her time away from him too short. Maybe it's his curse, he's the one who always feels too much.

Then she giggles, and suddenly something seems to lift off of his shoulders, which he is instantly guilty for because _Caroline,_ whom is just another unlucky girl on his list of names, and another person whom he cares far too much for.

"Stefan, if it was anyone who ever doubted her love it was you."

He can't find it in him to disagree with her.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

One Saturday afternoon, he finds her in the living room, a glass of bourbon in both hands, legs crossed on the couch, with a thoughtful, almost dazed gaze on her face, like she's at home. Or maybe she's _his_ home. Something like that.

It is that very defining moment he realises he's insane.

"It's funny," she laughs suddenly, clear and beautiful. He wonders how long it has been since he begun to love her laugh.

"What?"

"You know, how I said I wanted to know what it felt to be loved by you."

He knows. Bittersweet, haunting, the day she died, but please please _please,_ she doesn't need to know how he hates the way her voice had tickled at something faint and dead in the back of his mind called vacant memory.

"So?" He rolls his eyes.

"I do now, but I'm not sure whether it was worth it."

She's long gone before he realises what she meant.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

"What's wrong with you today?" Damon will sometimes ask, on the days he'll bother to notice, and in the rare moments he'll find time to care.

 _I'm insane_. He refrains from saying. The words hover above his mouth, an impending reality sentence waiting to happen. The implication of it all, it just overwhelms him and makes something he thought was long dead and gone in his chest begin to hurt.

"Everything." He says instead, not because it's true, but because Damon will be too distracted to see that it isn't a lie.

_I may be disturbed, but won't you concede?_

Because he can't seriously love a ghost for the rest of his life. No, not can't, _won't._

Something deep down inside wishes that he could.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

"You never mourned me." She says sharply. The guilt he feels is almost unbearable. She aims where it hurts most and leaves little left unturned and intact.

"You mourned the loss of a girl who tossed you aside, and you cried for your victims, but not-" the words hang, empty and useless, between them. _You never cried for me._

"I don't think I love you anymore."

This is how you hurt without wounding. You twist meaningful words into something unrecognisable until there is nothing left.

_I loved you once._

"You," her lips twist into something cruel and bitter, "are not _him_ anymore."

In his mind's eye he can see the girl she once was, naïve, dared to love, dared to hope, dared to dream.

_Even heroes have the right to dream._

"No, I haven't-I _haven't_ -I couldn't possi-" his exclamations fall off dead and numb lips.

"Whatever." he finally whispers in response, which is starting to become a habit, because he doesn't want her to know that _he_ knows that she's right. She's always right.

He's never wanted her to be wrong.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

The wedding day is the defining moment.

When Caroline, another mistake on his hit list, hurries away, leaving behind the girl who never learned to love properly and who could only be his substitution.

He smiles blankly at Elena, and prays for miracle to save him. He doesn't want to hear about her becoming human, Damon loving her enough to turn when she wouldn't love either of them enough to stay with them for eternity, because he's losing them. His family. He lost them the moment he fell in love with Elena Gilbert.

But suddenly, to his relief, she's there, hovering behind Elena's shoulder as though she's doing him a favour.

"I need to go." He hurries past a confused Elena, hurries into a room and barricades the door.

As always, like a whisper, she's right behind him, always prepared.

"So," she drawls, tucking her head into his shoulder, her hands crawling up his back. It's the first time in a long time she's touched him and somehow he's exhilarated by it.

"Whose heart are you going to break now?"

He opens his mouth, an unknown sentence lolling on his tongue. Whatever he says didn't enough to fill the void he feels without her. "I'm insane." He finally says, looking down at her upturned face.

"That's not answering my question." She smirks coyly, because Katherine always knew how to provoke someone into admitting defeat, and he's surprised that he's surrendering now.

_I loved you once. I think I still do._

The answers there, hovering between them, an unspoken understanding. What rolls off his tongue is not what he expected.

"I can't love a ghost for the rest of my life."

She looks almost heartbroken, as of such an emotion could touch her. She leans forward, lips brushing his ear and sending shivers down his spine in a way only she ever could.

"Who says you have to love me for the rest of your _life_?"

She pulls away. Her abrupt absence stings like vervain on skin.

"I-what-no-I can't-" He looks up and the room is empty, his failed expressions falling silent on his lips, a million words he'll never get to say.

He may have been the one who killed her, but she was the one who lit the flame, he reminds himself, a constant punch to the stomach.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

It just makes him want her more.

 

 

 

**-X-**

 

 

 

In the end, he loses. Falls short on the wrong end of the destiny stick.

Because she is like a magnet, and him a nail; throughout everything he's always attracted to her, and he'll always follow her, wherever she will be.

He leaves a note in his journal, because he knows Damon or Caroline will find it. Maybe they will understand how sorry he is.

It's like she controls him without touching. Controls him walking away from the reception, in the warm, fading sunlight, up a secluded, shady hill, and he knows he doesn't have much time left. She's so close now, he wants to touch her, be with her, be her everything for eternity.

With shaking fingers, he pulls off the ring that's saved him a thousand times, twisting it anxiously between his fingers as he looks out at the life he's leaving behind. There is regret, a lot of it, because he could have become so much more had he not killed Katherine Pierce, and he is leaving a lot behind.

Before he can think twice about it, he drops the ring to the ground and steps into the sun for the final time.

The sun, though slowly disappearing, strikes him with a momentary brilliant warmth and brings a smile to his face, because for a second he sees her, healthy and whole in all her beauty. She dazzles and hurts him, though he knows it's just her love.

By the time his lips finally meet hers, he is nothing but dust and a ring on a hillside, drifting in the wind.

 

 

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_I'm only a man who dared to dream._


End file.
